Template talk:ShipBox

Where does this "Battery units" come from? Also, other data like turning speed, acceleration, max speed, energy regeneration, etc may have a place in such a box. FYI: The exact numbers can be found in the source code (src/sc2code/ships/*/*.c, right at the start). — SvdB 03:22, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)

I usually get "Battery units" the same way I get the crew complement: by looking at the Melee ship window. I thought about including the other data (as found in the Star Control I ship databank image), but I didn't know how to find such data (until your info about the source code, that is). Sounds like a great idea. --Phoenix (t) 14:36, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)

Found it. It's the MAX_ENERGY constant in the .c file. Should I rename "battery units" to something else, like "energy banks" or something? --Phoenix (t) 15:32, 4 Oct 2005 (CEST)

I don't know if it's necessary to include the "Member of" field. Imho, that's a description of the race more than it is of the ship, and that info can be found on the respective race page. Also, it might look better to put the primary and secondary weapons above the the battery and crew numbers. --Fyzixfighter 17:41, 12 Nov 2005 (CET)

Yeah, you're right, I'll remove it. BTW, remember that this is a "young" template—don't apply it to any ships (other than Scout) until we've finalised the template. --Phoenix (t) 19:05, 14 Nov 2005 (CET)

Recent changes

While I do like including more information in a quick coherent fashion, and the 3DO images are a nice addition for the SC2-unique ships, this infobox is too dominating and distracting on most of the pages. Perhaps it would be better to change it to a footer infobox - leaving the databank/icon image in the upperleft like it was before, and then grouping the technical info and 3do image on the bottom in a template. One more reason that I think this would be more advantageous is that there are some things such as the delays and increment that are not easily discernable by the average reader - more reason to move it to the bottom; most people when reading a sentence, paragraph, or paper, if they get confused at the start, won't be able to read/understand the rest (one of the biggest mistakes in common scientific papers). I've got some ideas of how to make it work so after I'm done taking data at work in a few hours, I'll set up some mock-ups of what I'm thinking. Until then, patience young poot worm. --Fyzixfighter 23:01, 5 June 2007 (CEST)

I agree; the infoboxes are too imposing. Setting a maximum width might help; it would at least cause some of the lines to be broken. Also, when the 3DO image is included, the ship icon looks seems superfluous to me, and just makes the whole look bad, because of the low resolution of the icon.

In addition, if you upload an image, please include some description, including where the images came from. And TFB don't have the copyright on the 3DO videos, so we should watch what we publish here; I think this use falls under the quotation right that Dutch law has, but ianal. — SvdB 00:32, 6 June 2007 (CEST)

Hmm...I hadn't considered the copyright implications. I've made a mock-up of a horizontal footer shipbox at user:Fyzixfighter/Sandbox/Scout if anyone wants to look and comment. --Fyzixfighter 07:36, 8 June 2007 (CEST)

I like the footer. Its increased size also means that you can add battery consumption to the primary and secondary also (and ship mass, which should be under Navigation, and which would be "inertialess" for the Skiff and the Probe). Valaggar 13:07, 8 June 2007 (CEST)

My only concern is that we don't need to and we shouldn't include every single attribute, but those that are interesting and easily interpretable - for example, energy consumptions are easily understood, but the delay attributes aren't imo (ie what does a higher delay mean in terms of gameplay?). I'd much prefer if we could express these as rates. The same could probably be said about the speed increment - is this essentially the un-maxed acceleration? In a way, I think these boxes should give someone considering using the ship in melee a quick quantitative analysis (similar to the databank images, but with hard numbers and other data like mass). While the argument could be made that the databank images do just this, we don't have such images for the SC2-unique ships so this kind of shipbox allows us a uniform presentation of information similar to the SC1 databank images for all ships. Also, if we expand the # of attributes, the box will probably need to be organized a bit better so it doesn't become white-space dominated.

If the delay/increment thing is what you don't like, we can use "acceleration per second". The formula for average acceleration per second would be:

Average_Acceleration=(Thrust_Increment*Frame_Rate)/(Thrust_Delay+1)

I don't know, however, the frame rate; if SvdB would be nice enough to provide it...

Also, I don't know the unit of measurement used for thrust in the code - doesn't seem to be 320x200-size pixels per frame.

(re databank-like rates) You know, besides the SC1 ships already having the approximative stats in their databank image (which would lead to a non-uniformity which would be a bit non-beautiful), slight differences can be important: a Cruiser cannot run from a Dreadnought because the Dreadnought is slightly faster. Valaggar 08:55, 9 June 2007 (CEST)

The frame rate is 35 FPS, apparently, as the Table of bio types page indicates: "every frame that the lander is in contact with the creature (35 times per second)". The fragment has been added by SvdB.

So the formula should be: Average_Acceleration=(Thrust_Increment*35)/(Thrust_Delay+1) Valaggar 18:06, 11 June 2007 (CEST)

Actually I'm perfectly fine expressing it in units per frames. And as I understand it, this is the acceleration (not acceleration per second - sorry, I TA'd too many freshman physics courses and I'm a bit of a stickler for physics terms), ie the speed value of the ship increases by Thrust_Increment every Thrust_Delay+1 frames, right? I'm guessing that the same applies to the turn rate and energy regeneration. I think it's nice to leave the the acceleration as a ratio (##/##) conveying as much information as possible succinctly, though I'm not sure if it really makes that much of a difference if we express it otherwise as a decimal. The same could be said for the energy regeneration, which probably uses a similar equation based on Flagship Energy Management. Though the turn rate could be expressed as simply a decimal since the turn increments are all the same. Anyone know how they calculate the "Turn rate" of the Flagship that shows up in the Outfitting screen at the starbase? Just to let you know, I'll probably be changing the ShipBox to a footer here soon, as that seems to be something we can agree on - we can then continue to work out the exact layout and design. Objections? --Fyzixfighter 18:36, 11 June 2007 (CEST)

No objections. As to the "acceleration per second" - it's actually "thrust per second" (i.e. velocity change per second, i.e. acceleration) - I got a bit confused. Anyway, indeed frames are better than seconds, so Average_Acceleration=Thrust_Increment/(Thrust_Delay+1), since with seconds we end of with some large numbers (e.g. 2240) for maximum speeds...

A decimal form would be better than a ratio, I'd say, since it is easier to comprehend at a glance and to compare with other values; the delays are not that significant. It also looks tidy and neat with ratios, but the problem is when you try to figure out whether the Cruiser or the Dreadnought accelerates faster.

Energy regeneration is also based on increments and delays, so the average energy regeneration would be Average_Batt_Regen=Regen_Increment/(Regen_Delay+1). Here, the delay is significant only in the case of the Drone, where a note could explain that.

By the way, you made a mistake in calculating the turn rate of the Scout - it's 16, since it's TURN_WAIT is 0.

As to the weapon range - speed is also important (and whether the weapon is homing or not). Range is MISSILE_SPEED*MISSILE_LIFE. Weapon damage is applicable only to some weapons, the others should simply get a N/A (and salvos can be represented as damage (projectile quantity) - a Jugger would have "1 (salvo of 6 projectiles)"). Such cases are too rare to warrant a separate "salvo" entry. As to the effect of the N/A damage weapons... there are the Primary and Secondary sections of the article. Valaggar 21:11, 11 June 2007 (CEST)